One Long Season Esu's Douds Wants To Forget College Football

Denny Douds is one of the winningest NCAA Division II football coaches still actively plying his trade.

And for the astute East Stroudsburg University skipper his business admittedly always has been a lot of fun. That is up until this past season.

"I don't think I've ever had a tougher year, in fact, I know I haven't," admits the usually composed Warriors mentor who came into the 1985 campaign ranked seventh among the active NCAA coaches with an 11-year 78-32-1 mark and a .707 winning percentage.

ESU finished the year with just two wins -the fewest ever in any one season for the dauntless Douds. His forces lost their first seven straight games but then won two of the last three in what turned out to be the worst season in nearly 60 years of football at the school.

Douds has been thinking back over those long months. He had no favorites last weekend as Bloomsburg and Indiana battled for the Pennsylvania Conference crown, although he admits to be surprised by the score. Perhaps, he might have leaned a little toward Indiana since that's where his roots are.

But his Warriors this season had given Bloomsburg one of its toughest games before bowing 21-16 at ESU earlier in the year so he knew a lot about the Huskies.

And Douds couldn't help but remember how a year ago at Bloomsburg in the first month of the season, the Huskies came of age with a 23-13 win over his Big Red machine which had ruled the division for two straight years. Now, Bloomsburg had made it to the top at last with the 31-9 romp over Indiana. He had to be proud of the Eastern division which seldom wins it all. Actually, his ESU forces were the only other conference champions from the East in the last 14 years.

At the same time, the NCAA playoff berth won by Bloomsburg was not only deserving but a big feather in the conference's hat according to the ESU skipper whose love and support of the league as a whole is second only to that which he holds for his Warriors.

"Of course, we would have liked to be there like that," Douds points out. "The conference title is our one goal every year and it's something we've geared our program around, too," Douds adds. "Unfortunately, we didn't make it this year," he shrugged. ESU has won four conference championships in the last 10 years.

Douds is confident his team will be back. "I know we may have paid a heavy price this year," he said, "but even though we took some on the nose, our kids kept working and each week tried to get better and I know we were a much better football team in November than when we started out the first of September."

Douds, who makes no excuses, couldn't help but mention how injuries hurt. "In my 30 years coaching experience I never ever remember losing seven quarterbacks, five that started out the season on the team and two that were injured twice," he said, adding "but I guess some of that has to be expected; it's part of the game, but never through the doors like this."

The worst part according to Douds was that "we didn't expect this kind of year. We thought we would be right in there and in fact we had a shot in games here and there and took people to the fourth quarter almost every time. You'd think we should have come out even at least. Something like seven of our games were decided in that last quarter."

But, Douds wants to forget what happened and talk about next year. "We're going to have a lot of people back," he says. "Of about 55 lettermen we'll have 48 returning and that's more than I've ever had. Spring ball is going to be very interesting."

The Warriors mentor is also expecting another outstanding recruiting year. "We're looking at some real good prospects and I expect we'll land many of them. That possibility plus the fact that I feel the young people on our team this year really gained game experience and learned how to handle adversity which are the kind of ingredients that make for a successful teams."

Looking on the board right now, he says "we're losing two wide receivers (Tim Bishop and Joe Rovnan) who were the class of the East, an offensive tackle and another young man who started some games for us plus quarterback Charlie Diskin. That's on offense. As far as defense we have four people graduating but have lots back who played at those positions. So it looks good. And don't forget will have Ray Gentilella back. He played a lot of quarterback for us."

Also, Douds says that many of the conference teams were senior-laden this year and that should help. "Of course, we still have to improve as a whole football team and that means our kids have to work hard during the off season. But with the youth, experience and willingness to hang together the way they did this season; these all should be a plus for us next fall."